As already intimated the plebeian Bushman receives none of the sepulchral honours paid to the king. When he shows signs of giving up the ghost, his friends carry him out of his “wurley,” or hut, and one of them lays him straight along the ground as though he were already dead, with his hands by his side, and his feet close together. The dying man’s friend then commences what to a looker on would pass for a sort of mesmeric process: he strokes the patient from head to foot, carefully drawing his hands down the whole length of the body, and when arrived at the extremities pretending to throw something away. When this has gone on for the proper time, he pulls up stones and casts them with angry gestures at some imaginary spirit; not, however, to drive off any that he had just cast out, but to keep away the chief of evil spirits, who is always at hand to snatch away a Bushman’s life when he is so weakened by sickness as to be unable to take fast hold on it. Should he recover, well and good; but should he die (and it is more than likely), he is wrapped in his opossum rug after the fashion of a mummy, strings being wound round his body from his neck to his feet; and when he is laid in the grave, stones are placed upon him till they reach the surface of the ground. In some cases, however, the body is buried upright, and in a bent or sitting posture. The grave is of an oval or elliptical shape, as might be expected; but what is very remarkable, the body when laid straight always has its feet to the east and head to the west, as though to be able to welcome the rising sun. Mourning seems to be a very prevalent custom among all the natives, and they show by their adoption of pretty nearly the same mode a common bond which seldom appears in any other of their ways and actions. There are two fashions which take the lead of all others, one in which red and blue colours are used, and the other in which white is most conspicuous. These colours are painted on the face in streaks of various forms, strongly suggestive of the tattooing of the New Zealanders; but sometimes laid on in such a way that the nose is half of one colour and half of another.